


Skin, Bone, Feathers

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Growing Up, M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 23:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5310623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hurts while the wings are growing in, but it doesn't hurt forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin, Bone, Feathers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elenothar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/gifts).



They hurt, the wings do. 

Not forever, of course, but while they're growing in, they hurt like anything. They tell you that in school, in health class, but it's just a throwaway thought, not anything that anyone pays attention to. Everyone is too impatient to grow up already and get wings of their own, too busy imagining what theirs will look like when they finally do.

It's not a sharp, shooting thing. Nothing sudden or focused like that. It's a diffuse type of pain, a bone-deep ache that arrives one morning and then just doesn't leave for a year or eighteen months, a constant weary tag-along, and you forget what it's like not to be sore.

And then: you wake up again, and suddenly the pain is gone, as if it were never there to begin with.

* * *

Charles is almost fifteen, and he is curled up on his side in his bed, sheets around his waist, wearing only his pajama bottoms. Raven is sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding a glass of water and some ibuprofen. Charles takes the pills that she hands to him and swallows them down with a sip of the water.

"Thank you," he says.

"Your back looks awful," Raven says. She's only eleven, years to go left before hers come, and her curiosity burns greater than her sympathy. "It's all red and bumpy and weird."

"Thank you," Charles says again, more drily this time. "I appreciate that."

"Does it itch?"

"Like the dickens."

Raven pats him on his bare shoulder. Her hand is cool and dry and Charles leans into the touch.

* * *

Two months after his birthday, the first feathers show up, tiny wisps of down that glide and shift against the back of his shirt all day long at school. At home he spends five minutes twisting and turning in front of the bathroom mirror, but he can't manage to get the right angle to see. He has to ask Raven.

"They're pale blue," she tells him from the doorway. "Like a robin's egg."

* * *

They get darker over time. By the time he's sixteen, they're the color of a calm sea, or the sky in summer. 

Blue feathers mean calm, or passion; ambition, or peacefulness. There are a million different versions of what each color is supposed to mean. Just like horoscopes, exactly as contradictory, arbitrary and unscientific.

* * *

He is eighteen and Erik is too and it's their first night together.

"They're the same color as your eyes," Erik murmurs when Charles slips off his sweater.

Charles's cheeks are warm, and his chest is tight. Erik is staring at him, eyes lit with something close to wonder, and Charles stares back at him as he lets his wings unfurl to their full extent.

Erik doesn't move, so Charles has to pull him in closer, close enough to kiss again. After a moment, Erik moves his hand toward Charles's back, and a light finger traces along a feather.

Charles breaks his mouth away to gasp. No one has ever touched his wings before, besides the doctor at his annual check-ups. It's not a place people touch casually. It's a private thing, a special thing. 

Charles didn't know it would feel quite this--this sensitive, this connected to every nerve in his body.

"Okay?" Erik murmurs.

"Okay," Charles agrees, kissing him again.

He's seen the edges of Erik's wingtips before, peeking out from his shirt when he stretches. He knows the wings are white, that they're long and sleek. But he's still not prepared for the naked sight of them, stretching out behind Erik and outwards in a glorious curve.

They're almost blinding. Perfect, like the pictures they use for example illustrations in books. It's only when Charles looks closer that he can see the the imperfections. There are places where the feathers are scraggly. There is a place near the bottom where there are none at all, torn away and never grown back. 

White feathers mean purity, or so people say. 

Charles kisses his way down the long column of Erik's spine, and Erik shudders beneath his lips, his wings fluttering softly.

Afterwards, lying curled together in Erik's bed, their wings overlap above them, covering them like a blanket. It's dim and warm and they're close enough to share each other's breaths.

Erik sighs, and stretches. "It doesn't hurt," he says softly. His tone is considering and surprised.

Charles doesn't immediately understand, which Erik seems to see, because he continues, "My wings. They don't hurt with you here."

Erik is the same age as Charles is; his wings stopped growing years ago. Charles curls his hand tighter around Erik's ribs, fingers brushing against another circle of scar tissue as he does.

"Good," he says finally. "They're not supposed to." None of it is supposed to, he thinks, and he presses another dry kiss to Erik's shoulder and hopes that pain is through and past.


End file.
